The upcoming August 21, 2017, total solar eclipse is a fascinating event in its own right. It’s also interesting to note that on April 8, 2024, there will be another total solar eclipse whose path will cut nearly perpendicular to the one this year.

On August 21, 2017, an event will happen across parts of the Western Hemisphere that has not been seen by most people in their lifetimes. A total eclipse of the Sun will sweep across the face of the United States and nearby oceans. Although eclipses of this type are not uncommon across the world, the chance of one happening near you is quite small and is often a once-in-a-lifetime event unless you happen to travel the world regularly. This year, the total eclipse will be within driving distance of most people in the lower 48 states.

We’re always excited to see new books that illustrate applications of Wolfram technology in a wide range of fields. Below is another set of recently published books using the Wolfram Language to explore computational thinking. From André Dauphiné’s outstanding geographical studies of our planet to Romano and Caveliere’s work on the geometric optics that help us study the stars, we find a variety of fields served by Wolfram technology.

Exoplanets are currently an active area of research in astronomy. In the past few years, the number of exoplanet discoveries has exploded, mainly as the result of the Kepler mission to survey eclipsing exoplanet systems. But Kepler isn’t the only exoplanet study mission going on. For example, the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) studies its own set of targets. In fact, the media recently focused on an exoplanet system orbiting an obscure star known as TRAPPIST-1. As an introduction to exoplanet systems, we’ll explore TRAPPIST-1 and its system of exoplanets using the Wolfram Language.

Kip Thorne, physicist, New York Times bestselling author, and professor emeritus at Caltech, ignited fans’ passion for science through his work on the movie Interstellar. The sci-fi adventure won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and the first cuts of some of those stunning visuals were created with Mathematica and the Wolfram Language.

“Mathematica was my way of testing whether or not I had the equations right,” says Thorne, whose computational approach to producing images led to publication in the American Journal of Physics and Classical and Quantum Gravity.

Earlier today at a press conference held at the National Science Foundation headquarters in Washington, DC, it was announced that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed the first detection of a gravitational wave. The image reproduced below shows the signal read off from the Hanford, Washington, LIGO installation. The same signal could be seen in the data from the Livingston, Louisiana, site as well. While this signal may not seem like much, it is one of the most important scientific discoveries of our lifetime.

You may have heard that on March 20 there was a solar eclipse. Depending on where you are geographically, a solar eclipse may or may not be visible. If it is visible, local media make a small hype of the event, telling people how and when to observe the event, what the weather conditions will be, and other relevant details. If the eclipse is not visible in your area, there is a high chance it will draw very little attention. But people on Wolfram Community come from all around the world, and all—novices and experienced users and developers—take part in these conversations. And it is a pleasure to witness how knowledge of the subject and of Wolfram technologies and data from different parts of the world are shared.

2015 is shaping up to be an interesting year in space exploration. For the first time, we will get up-close views of a dwarf planet. In fact, two different spacecraft will visit two different dwarf planets. The Dawn spacecraft is nearing its second primary target, Ceres, later this week. Later this year, the New Horizons spacecraft will visit Pluto.

As an amateur astronomer, I’m always interested in ways to use Mathematica in my hobby. In earlier blog posts, I’ve written about how Mathematica can be used to process and improve images taken of planets and nebulae. However, I’d like to be able to control my astronomical hardware directly with the Wolfram Language.

In particular, I’ve been curious about using the Wolfram Language as a way to drive my telescope mount, for the purpose of automating an observing session. There is precedent for this because some amateurs use their computerized telescopes to hunt down transient phenomena like supernovas. Software already exists for performing many of the tasks that astronomers engage in—locating objects, managing data, and performing image processing. However, it would be quite cool to automate all the different tasks associated with an observing session from one notebook.

Mathematica is highly useful because it can perform many of these operations in a unified manner. For example, Mathematica incorporates a vast amount of useful astronomical data, including the celestial coordinates of hundreds of thousands of stars, nebula, galaxies, asteroids, and planets. In addition to this, Mathematica‘s image processing and data handling functionality are extremely useful when processing astronomical data.

The planet Mars comes into opposition, the point closest to the Earth, about every 780 days, or a bit over two years. The Martian opposition this year was on April 9. This past May, on a rare clear, warm night, I attempted to capture some images of the red planet. Unfortunately once I had my telescope set up, Mars had passed behind a large tree, so the images I captured were distorted by tree branches. Nevertheless, I did manage to capture a set of frames, and hoped that image processing with Mathematica could produce something usable.